Upali, the barber, saves the Sakya widow.

Upali was a humble barber. Lord Buddha gave him ordination and seniority over aristocratic young monks. How did he justify this revolutionary step?
He told the following story- 'Once, there were two good friends who were poor but kind and always gave alms. One of them was reborn as a king and the other reborn in a noted Brahmin family. The Brahmin married a lovely lady and loved her deeply. Due to some misunderstanding, his wife quarreled with him and did not want to talk to him for quite a long time. One day, his wife asked him to buy some flowers to decorate their house. He was overjoyed to gain back his wife so he sang love-songs on his way home.

'At that time, the king was admiring the view in the palace and he heard the singing of the happy Brahmin. The king sent for the Brahmin and both of them, became good friends.

'The king trusted the Brahmin greatly and the Brahmin became an influential person in the country. He became so famous that the people of that country regarded him as king. But the Brahmin was not contented, he thought of assassinating the king and seizing the throne. But he finally realized his mistakes and repented before the king. Though he was forgiven, he decided to renounce the world. Not long after he renounced the world, he attained miraculous power.

'At that time, there was a barber in the palace. When he heard about the story of the Brahmin from the king, he too vowed to renounce the world and became the disciple of the Brahmin, who was now a saint. The barber too attained miraculous power.

'Both the Brahmin and the barber had attained the state of sainthood, hence one day, when the king paid a visit to the Brahmin, after paying obeisance to the Brahmin, he too made an obeisance to the barber.'

When Buddha finished this story, he identified the Birth, " In those days, the Brahmin was me and Upali was the barber."

In other words, a 'Shudra' barber, like Upali, could gain Enlightenment and a position of the highest respect both under both Brahminism and Buddhism. Furthermore, unlike Jainism, a Buddha could be born either from a Brahmin or a Kshatriya womb.

Interestingly, Upali, the barber was instrumental in the rescue of a Sakya widow who had taken refuge in the Sangha.

The story is as follows- 'In Kapilavatthu, there was a written rule for the Sakya clan, saying that girls of the clan are not allowed to marry to the other clan, otherwise, she would be severely punished.

At that time, there was a young woman whose husband had just passed away. A young woman like her was naturally the focus of many young men's attention. This young widow showed interest in someone but her brother-in-law was interested in her. When she turned down his proposal, he was very angry and vowed to put her to death.

Once, he put a drug in the wine he gave her. The young widow drank it and was drunk. Her brother-in-law beats her and later reported to the government, saying, " She is my wife but she had intimacy with a man from other clan."

The young widow knew she would be executed so she escaped. She came to Sravasti and became a nun.

When the government knew that this young widow was in Sravasti, they wrote a letter to the king of Sravasti requesting him to have the woman arrested and sent to Kapilavatthu.

The king, after receiving this letter, asked his ministers whether it was true that the young widow came to Sravasti.

The ministers replied, "This young widow had escaped to our country but she is now a nun. You had set up a rule that anyone who offended the Brethren and nuns would be severely punished. She is a nun now and no one dares to offend her. So what should we do?"

After careful consideration, the king wrote a letter to the government of Kapilavatthu saying that the young widow has become a nun and according to their rule, nuns could be exempted from punishment.

The government of Kapilavatthu was indignant. When Upali came to know about it, he asked Buddha, "Lord Buddha, can we ordain one who had violated the law?"

"Before the government acquits her, we should not ordain her," replied Buddha.

But the Buddha knowing the young widow has innocent of the crime, did not release her, but at the same time said that the Sangha cannot be used as a refuge for people to escape justice.

Upali was unpopular with the Bretheren because he always asked pertinent questions. His emphasis was on the letter of the law- he saw that Buddhism could become a countervailing Universalistic source of Law to combat the ad hoc Aristocratic rules of petty Princedoms.

Unfortunately,Monastic Religions face 3 quite separate problems-

1) They are an attractive way to hold or gain Wealth. Thus local elites will seek to capture their operations. Thus Monastic Religion ends up reinforcing Aristocracy. At best it can operate like the Jesuit Order. At worst it degenerates into the rule of a Dalai Lama or Bogdh Khan. It has no path to the Universal Rule of Law because the encumbrance of it's own property and privileges militate against this.

2) Either they provide Elite Credentials or else they peddle Popular Magical remedies. In the short term, they can do both. Longer term, this isn't possible because Magic doesn't work. More generally, they need to ration Elite Credentials by Class in order to keep their cachet.

3) Once a tipping point for vernacular  literacy is achieved, Mummies and Daddies do a better job bringing up bright kids than Monks and Nuns. Time spent praying is time wasted. 

Romila Thapar silencing the Public Intellectual

Sonia Gandhi knew little about the country it fell to her to rule. One of the experts she consulted regularly to remedy her ignorance was Romila Thapar.

Clearly, the distinguished historian was a 'durbari' intellectual- a courtier savant- was she also ever a 'Public Intellectual' like Emile Zola who condemned the injustice done to Dreyfus?
Of course she was. She condemned the imprisonment without trial of a host of Politicians and Trade Unionists and Journalists during the Emergency. Her book 'J'accuse Madam Indira!' was a best seller.
I'm kidding. She wrote no such book.

What she did do was attack the policies of the party opposed to Sonia Gandhi, whom she herself regularly visited and advised.

In this partisan exercise, what helped her was her long history of writing highly communal attacks on one particular type of Religion- Brahmanic as opposed to Shramanic- which she castigated as intolerant and backward. The fact that the other sort- Shramanic Buddhism- was sheer money-grubbing, elitist, misogynistic, casteist  stupidity, special pleading and magical thinking, most of whose practitioners happened to be Brahmin males- she glossed over. Instead, she affirmed that Indian history is only 'communalized' if reference is made to antagonism between Hinduism and Islam. This is because whereas India is now divided between Buddhistan and Vedistan, Muslims live happily with Hindus in places where they are the majority. Thapar, as a Hindu, may be right in saying that Hindus had no antagonism to Muslims- the Muslim population of India is now a higher percentage than at Partition- but she is surely wrong to say that Islam in India wasn't hostile to Hindus.

The facts speak for themselves. Hindus and Christians, but also Muslims deemed insufficiently orthodox, have been either ethnically cleansed or subjected to continuous intimidation, harassment and terror in areas where Muslims are either numerically stronger or feel themselves at an advantage.

For Thapar, the true story of India is one of resistance to stupid and needy Brahmins by less stupid and more greedy Brahmins who decided it paid better to pose as Buddhists. Islam was an irrelevance, except in so far as it killed off all the Hindus, in which case it was actually only avenging Buddhism and thus on the side of the angels.

Thapar explains that 'Buddhism was edged out of India by, among other things, Brahminical orthodoxy. In India, the State of Bihar derives it name from 'Vihara', the term for a Buddhist monastery. What about Naobehar, near Balkh, in Afghanistan? Its name derives from 'New Vihara'.

Who destroyed Buddhism in Balkh? Did Brahmin orthodoxy play a part? Or is it not the case that Viharas in Balkh were destroyed by the same people, for the same reason, as the Viharas of Bihar were destroyed?

Who 'edged Buddhism out' of Afghanistan and Central Asia? Who is edging Christianity out of Iraq and Syria today? Who 'edged out' Hinduism and Sikhism from Pakistan?

It certainly wasn't Islam. Perish the thought! Probably it was neo-liberalism.

Even suppose Lord Buddha was stupid or self-serving enough to commit to the theory given above, was it really the case that 'private property' alone gave rise to 'confusion and conflict'? Was there really never any invasion by an aggressive tribe to be countered? In addition to an elected Magistrate, was it really the case that no Military Chief was required?

Apparently not. Lord Buddha said-
31. 'And, Vasettha, whoever of these four castes, as a monk, becomes an Arahant who has destroyed the corruptions, done what had to be done, laid down the burden, attained to the highest goal, completely destroyed the fetter of becoming, and become liberated by the highest insight, he is declared to be chief among them in accordance with Dhamma, and not otherwise.
 Dhamma's the best thing for people
 In this life and the next as well.
32. 'Vasettha, it was Brahma Sanankamara who spoke this verse:
 "The Khattiya's best among those who value clan;
 He with knowledge and conduct is best of gods and men."
This verse was rightly sung, not wrongly, rightly spoken, not wrongly, connected with
profit, not unconnected. I too say, Vasettha:
 [98] "The Khattiya's best among those who value clan;
 He with knowledge and conduct is best of gods and men."'
Thus the Lord spoke, and Vasettha and Bharadvaja were delighted and rejoiced at his
words.

In the Agganna Sutta, quoted above, the Buddha explains to 2 Brahmin monks why his own caste is superior to theirs, just as their caste is superior to that of the Vaishyas who in turn rank above the despicable Shudras. The argument he uses is foolish and utterly false. It is not true that an 'Abhassara Brahma' world ever existed or that it will exist. The whole thing is a myth- like the Sea of Milk or the Celestial Tortoise or Jesus rising from the Dead. Buddha was a stupid fuckwit who thought sex was bad, eating was bad, and Warriors who can actually fight, Kings who can actually govern- like King Pasenadi- were also bad. He himself, he considered to be very very good because he simply went around telling stupid self-serving lies about his own greatness which was why King Pasenadi had become his disciple.

Thapar's own anti-Brahmin vitriol is perfectly understandable. Like the Buddha, she is a Kshatriya. Her Uncle was a dud as Army Chief. Clearly, her people would have been better off sticking to making money or pretending to be Marxists.  Naturally, possessing neither intelligence nor capacity for learning, she resented the Brahmin reputation for both. Thus, she is not a historian but a victim of her history. Her Punjabi Hindu Khattri ancestors, though good at making money, failed in defending their own homeland. It falls to their obedient daughter to claim that this involved no disgrace since there was never any Islamic threat in the first place. The only evil that existed in India was that of the Brahmins. Since Soniaji, being a foreigner, came to her for 'tuition', she herself had a duty to her Client which she could easily discharge by pretending that Hindutva is some sort of Brahminical conspiracy. The fact that non-Brahmins, like Modi and Amit Shah, have made it attractive to the voter probably has something to do with 'neo-liberalism'. Public Intellectuals have a duty to speak out against it. The fact that 'neo-liberalism' doesn't exist- and that those members of the Public who have intellectual inclinations can easily find this out for themselves- means that Silence is the only valid Parrhesia in this context.

Thapar, speaking of the Silence of the Public Intellectual, so nakedly reveals her own ignorance and stupidity as to stun, if not shame, her audience into silence.

Nagarjuna's Madras Curry

When I first came to London, as a carnivorous Carnatic lad, I was compelled to choose between only three types of curry.

 Korma was too mild. Phaal blew your arse off. Madras was in between. 

(Goan Vindaloo is sour-sweet shite and only suitable for spoiled pork)

I wish I could say I always chose Madras, more especially as that's where I'm from. Sadly, I didn't. I'd drink till closing time and then order Phaal at the tandoori. 
However, when it came to Soteriological Epistemologies, I was partial to Buddhism- Jainism was constipating, Hinduism crapulous, but Buddhism was just right especially after I learnt to economise by getting drunk only on an empty stomach and could nurse a hangover with the comforting thought that-

Whatever is dependently co-arisen, 

That is explained to be emptiness. 

That, being a dependent designation, 

Is itself the middle way. 

Nagarjuna (MMK XXIV : 18)

What's more, a mid-morning hair of the dog shows you that Sansara really is Nirvana.

However, in omitting my post pub Curry, I now realize I showed a lack of true Vivek. Curry is important for understanding Nagarjuna. Not Curry, the dish, but Haskell Curry the logician.

Here's an example of Curry's paradox.

'If this sentence is true, then Nagarjuna's Madhyamika is a Madras Curry.'

With a two cornered Logic, with an excluded middle, this sentence is true even  if Nagarjuna was actually from Andhra & cooked Phaal.

A four cornered Logic need not be dialethic if there is some intensional criteria (rather than a conditional) such that two corners have a pragmatics (i.e. an interpretation or uniformly presentable ideal of a certain sort) which can be shown to be empty or asymptotically approach emptiness. However, because Set theory uses extensional definitions, and thus can't distinguish between the recursive and the recursively enumerable, it is condemned to glutty or gappy pragmatics.

Nagarjuna has Scriptural authority to make emptiness intensional in a particular way which side-steps problems caused by Time. Being a brainy guy, he formulates a Curry type tetralemma which omits mention of this Scriptural authority and yet which entails nothing he doesn't assent to.

This annoys the fuck out of the Nyaya pundits but doesn't blow the arse out of ontology and that's why Umasvati and Sankara, in their different ways, do something similar for their own traditions.

But this doesn't mean Nagarjuna is always a Madras Curry.

For incautious Westerner's he's viciously Phaal.

Take the case of Graham Priest, who has proposed an 'Inclosure Schema' to tackle various types of paradoxes, like the sorites. But we know it can't tackle, or even effectively spot, Curry paradoxes. So what could be funnier than watching Priest tackle Nagarjuna because we know in advance that he is chewing on, not Korma or Madras, but blow-your-arse-off Phaal?

Let's play the video-

This is Priest (with Jay Garfield) on Nagarjuna

'The contradictions at the limits of thought have a general and bipartite structure. The first part is an argument to the effect that a certain view, usually about the nature of the limit in question, transcends that limit (cannot be conceived, described, etc.). 
This is Transcendence. The other is an argument to the effect that the view is within the limit-Closure. Often, this argument is a practical one, based on the fact that Closure is demonstrated in the very act of theorizing about the limits. At any rate, together, the pair describe a structure that can conveniently be called an inclosure: a totality, Q and an object, o, such that o both is and is not in Q. On closer analysis, inclosures can be found to have a more detailed structure. At its simplest, the structure is as follows. The inclosure comes with an operator, 8, which, when applied to any suitable subset of Q, gives another object that is in Q (that is, one that is not in the subset in question, but is in Q). Thus, for example, if we are talking about sets of ordinals, 8 might apply to give us the least ordinal not in the set. If we are talking about a set of entities that have been thought about, 8 might give us an entity of which we have not yet thought. The contradiction at the limit arises when 8 is applied to the totality Q itself. For then the application of 8 gives an object that is both within and without Q: the least ordinal greater than all ordinals, or the unthought object...
Central to Nagarjuna's understanding of emptiness as immanent in the conventional world is his doctrine of the emptiness of emptiness. That, we have seen, is what prevents the two truths from collapsing into an appearance/reality or phenomenon/noumenon distinction. But it is also what generates the contradictions characteristic of philosophy at the limits. We have encountered two of these, and have seen that they are intimately connected. The first is a paradox of expressibility: linguistic expression and conceptualization can express only conventional (Vyavaharika) truth; the ultimate truth (Paramaartha)  is that which is inexpressible and that which transcends these limits. So it cannot be expressed or characterized. But we have just done so. The second is a paradox of ontology: all phenomena, Nagarjuna argues, are empty, and so ultimately have no nature (svabhava) . But emptiness is, therefore, the ultimate nature of things. So they both have and lack an ultimate nature. 
That these paradoxes involve Transcendence should be clear. In the first case, there is an explicit claim that the ultimate truth transcends the limits of language and of thought. In the second case, Nagarjuna claims that the character of ultimate reality transcends all natures. That they also involve Closure is also evident. In the first case, the truths are expressed and hence are within the limits of expressibility; and in the second case, the nature is given and hence is within the totality of all natures. 

We'd better stop the video here. I mean it's one thing to muffle one's giggles while watching a guy eat a Phaal curry but quite another to follow him in to the toilet.  More especially as Priest has Jay Garfield in tow and at this point the shite they are spouting is that Nagarjuna was headed out of Buddhism into a supposedly rational Dialethia without any soteriological features. This is as bad as David Kalupahana's attempt to turn Nagarjuna into a William James type pragmatic or Ewing Chinn's attempt to turn him into John Dewey. Why not just say, Nagarjuna was headed towards a career as a singing waiter at an Elvis themed Diner soon to be opening in suburban Toledo?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not whining about them Whiteys stealing our Tribal totem pole- not only are they welcome to it, they will also preserve it better than we would. On the contrary, I'm saying don't pretend your Philosophy campus is built over an old Indian's burial ground. And definitely don't order Nagarjuna's Curry coz it aint Madhyamika Madras but blow-your-arse-off Phaal.

There are plenty of pious Western Buddhists who do the Meditation and who work for Universal Welfare and so on. But they understand Buddhism is a Religion and have a Religious attitude towards it. Certainly, Buddhism has what we call Philosophy. But it isn't Psilosophy because even in the form of Nagarjuna's Curry it isn't shite. Not yet.

Buddhism can have a concept of the limit as antarabhava or (Tibetan) bardo, similar to Ibn Arabi's barzakh. This, by itself means that it can have a dynamic conception of substance similar to Jain parinami dhravya. However, if it also has kshanikavada- i.e. a doctrine of momentariness- then the dynamics are stalemated and instead you have spatial entanglement- i.e. dependent origination, which Nagarjuna defines as svabhava emptiness, but we also know- on the authority of the Buddha- that there can be a 'cetana' (intentionality) such that the entanglement is severed. Since Buddhism is radically ontologically dysphoric, this is the aim of meditation and study. Followers of Nagarjuna thus hold that 'at the limit' both instantaneous enlightenment (when sansara becomes identical with nirvana) and Bodhisattvahood are possible.
Given that all this is the case, Priest's dialethia looks pretty silly. What Nagarjuna has done is show that there is an intensional pragmatics consistent with Buddha's all manumitting message- 'Truth is One. There is no second'

Debbie does Dharamsala- Tibetan Tulkus & Tantric Sex Slaves.

As a kid in Sikkim, my Mum often warned me about White women. They were probably anthropologists who might mistake me for a pygmy of some as yet undiscovered tribe and try to have sex with me. In Papua New Guinea, or Irian Jaya or some such place, an American Anthropologist had tracked down an tiny wrinkled old man in the Jungle and begun raping him while claiming to be married to him. The Indonesian army managed to drag her off him and repatriate her to the U.S. True, Hope Cooke and George Orwell's friend who married Kazi Lendup Dorjee, weren't actually guilty of rape. But, they weren't feminist academics either. At least they didn't write serious feminist books.

Not so, June Campbell who became a Buddhist nun and slept with some smelly old man. This was a clear case of abuse because ...urm... he was a Tibetan monk rather than some random dude from the homeless shelter and she wasn't drunk off her head or only doing it coz she lost a bet or something. The question that Feminism must face is why smelly old fuckwits from far away places still want to stick their dicks into vaginas?

The answer it turns out is 'because of the deep Power ditopology of the 14 dimensional interaction of the Patriarchical peristalsis of the Post-Kristevan Chora and all men are shits and gimme tenure already.'

This is from the article in the Independent previously linked to- my comments in bold.

' To outsiders, the Rinpoche was one of the most revered yogi-lamas in exile outside Tibet.  To outsiders, the Ratcathcer or whatever was some  smelly old fuckwit charlatan refugee from some place nobody every heard of. As abbot of his own monastery, he had taken vows of celibacy and was celebrated for having spent 14 years in solitary retreat. Smelly homeless guy was a Doctor or Witch Doctor or whatever back in his smelly old homeland but basically the guy was a smelly homeless dude of some foreign sort so DON'T GIVE HIM A FUCKING BLOW JOB. Among his students were the highest-ranking lamas in Tibet.  This smelly old dude who kept getting BJs off our June had students as perverted as himself amongst the highest ranking perverts back wherever.  "His own status was unquestioned in the Tibetan community," said Ms Campbell, "and his holiness attested to by all." 

The inner circles of the world of Tibetan Buddhism - for all its spread in fashionable circles in the West - is a closed and tight one. As opposed to Ms Campbell's. Her claims, though made in a restrained way- 'Debbie does Dharamsala' not having quite the right ring-  in the context of a deeply academic book subtitled "In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism", provoked what she described as a primitive outpouring of rage and fury. "I was reviled as a liar or a demon," she said during a public lecture last week at the non-sectarian College for Buddhist Studies in Sharpham, Devon. "In that world he was a saintly figure. It was like claiming that Mother Teresa was involved in making porn movies."

But it was not fear of the response which made her wait a full 18 years before publishing her revelations in a volume entitled Traveller in Space - a translation of dakini, the rather poetic Tibetan word for a woman used by a lama for sex. It took her that long to get over the trauma of the experience. "I spent 11 years without talking about it and then, when I had decided to write about it, another seven years researching. I wanted to weave together my personal experience with a more theoretical understanding of the role of women in Tibetan society to help me make sense of what had happened to me."

Frankly, the amazing thing is that the smelly old dude in question wasn't totally bent and didn't weep tears of blood on being confronted by a vag. 

Monasteries just aren't good places for heterosexual males to spend their whole fucking lives. They're great for butt sex or no sex, but if what your genes want you to do is to get with a vag, then they can seriously fuck you up.

But, Campbell's Monk didn't get her preggers- so still kind of missing the point about vaginas, Holy Tibetan dude.  What makes them super special is that's where babies come from. And trying to help your kids with their Homework will soon disabuse you of any notion you might have that you're  'enlightened' or don't need to a second mortgage on your after-life to pay for College what with the way tuition fees keep going up.

 For which, personally, I blame David Cameron. That boy aint right.

Pratyekas supervene on Boddhisatvas?

A Pratyeka Buddha is a 'hidden' Buddha who, however, does not start up a proper Sangha, or monastic community,  for which salvation consists of waxing fat on a lazy doctrine while putting the squeeze on the laity for donations and forcing dalits to do the dirty work under conditions of more wretched yet social opprobium.

A Bodhisattva is not less than a Pratyeka Buddha- he has attained the prize- which is a phenomenal state- but he has a different intentional state- viz. he wishes to save other sentient beings by getting them to understand that the Jains and the Ajivikas and all other Sraman denominations- not to mention the Carvaka materialists- are totally fucked in the head and could everybody kindly be very very shitty to 'low caste' people- coz they don't got 'right livelihood-' and like immediately become a monk or hand us monks loads of money already?

Clearly, Pratyeka Buddhahood supervenes on Boddhisatvahood- in the sense that every Boddhisatva is indistinguishable from the stand-point of any Pratyeka specific measure- but the reverse is not the case. Two instances of Pratyeka Buddhahood can always be distinguished from the Boddhisatva perspective as approaching closer or standing in some relation to itself. (Either that, or Pratyekas are 'zombie' Buddhas and can't have 'real' intentionality.)  But, why should this be?

One answer is that the Times weren't right for the Prayeka to set up a Sangha. In this case, there is some phenomenal state that supervenes- is multiply realizable across both Pratyekas and Boddhisatvas- but some 'cetana' or intentional state which does not similarly supervene. Why? Is it because sentient beings capable of Entanglement, as in the Avatamsaka or Vimalakirti 'Buddha field', do not exist? If so, something is added to the concept of Intentionality and something taken away from the scope of Phenomenology.

But Phenomenology does not disappear. The intention to be a Boddhisatva does not make you a Boddhisatva. You have to first instantiate in your phenomenal series that supervenient Pratyekadom otherwise you're just a wannabe.
Since, the Bodhhisatva 'cetana' or intentional state has supervenience- i.e. is multiply realizable- only if the ground for an entangled Buddhafield is ready at hand, an Occassionalist doctrine suggests itself as an (non) explanation for why the Pratyeka phenomenal state does not reduce to Bodhisattvadom.

In other words, Phenomenology and its dual Occassionalism re-appear in Buddhism as the two sides of the coin of 'Nothingness' which it cashes out as. Indeed, only the name of the coin changes, nothing sensible ever gets uttered, in this as in every other variety of peripatetic fraud or soteriological chicanery whose pious cultivation ensures we will always have more monks than reason.

'twixt two trees, Yashoda

 Tho' Eve's Beauty vengeful take

The Son from His Father

Must, Lord, thy distance make

My son yet farther?

Thy King's Evil is only this, that by supervenience
Scrofula necks with Bliss, to connect obedience,
For all but Rahul, thy Prince and Heir
Tho' mobled Queens die young and fair.

Add Maryam to Maya, Sita, as Earth's proletarian true
'Twixt two trees, Yashoda, yet after-birth is Rue
For, this one thing less, now, Ind's Zero lacks
Zombies fosters, Gita, thy lullaby axe!

Envoi-

Thou Prince of the Air! I can't curse save darn thee

Expel thy unco guid from the House of Gandhi!

Buddhism is a protest Religion targeting the anti-casteism of the Hindus.

A truly terrible situation arose two and half millennia ago. A bunch of evil Hindu priests- known as Brahmins- were providing a route out of the Caste System and Untouchability and Gender inequality and so on. How they did it was by chanting some mantras or feeding some butter into a fire or other such ghastliness before declaring anyone with a bit of money or power or reputation for generosity or sadism or whatever to be whatever they wanted to be- a King, a God, a Priest, a Sage, a guy who gets to go to Heaven without first dying, a guy who gets to go to a nicer Heaven than everybody else, a guy who gets to go to Heaven, fuck God's wife and what's more, force God to watch  till God is like all- 'no, please, not  ass to mouth again, Jeez this is horrible... worse than Sex in the City 2... could someone just fucking shoot me?''

Buddhism developed as a protest against not just the Brahmins- but the whole concept of getting ahead by acquiring titles, honours, memberships in graded sodalities, guilds, etc. Buddhism did this by saying 'You really think you're getting ahead? That's sweet. Good thing you don't know success just puts the karma monster on your trail. Boy are you so called successful people fucking yourselves up big time.'
Since a lot of urban, or semi-urban, Brahmins, by reason of their profession, led a miserable self-loathing existence as cloak room attendants to Secular Success, they immediately thrilled to the Buddhist message. Indeed, Buddhism was never anti-Brahmin. Lord Buddha himself granted one sub-sect of those beggars direct entry to Monastic status.

What Buddhism does is create a bunch of people- Monks- who are superior to everything that can be imagined. Everybody has to get re-born as one of these Monks to escape suffering. The Monks do nothing but live off the fat of the land telling everybody else how fucked their lot is.

Of course, Buddhism hates Social mobility, Gender equality and so on, coz that gives people a sense of achievement and happiness and gives the lie to their atrocious notion that not being one of themselves is equal to unending misery. True, Buddhism works hard to make not being a fucking Buddhist head monk a fucking unending misery but, lets face it, the hardest work a fucking Buddhist monk is capable of is still just sloth and idleness by any objective standard. Still, some people are fooled.

This is a link to an article which claims that Tibetan Buddhism put a lot of artisan classes into the untouchable category who previously, or simultaneously in non Buddhist areas, enjoyed a higher status.

The revival of Buddhism in India is linked to the Constitutional creation of a privileged status for the caste from which the guy responsible for the revival- who also wrote the Constitution- comes from. Coincidence? Perhaps. What is undeniable is that a huge number of statues of the guy are going up all over the place.

For which I, personally, blame David Cameron. That boy aint right.

Stephen Batchelor and the true message of the Buddha.

Stephen Batchelor, in his latest book on Buddhism writes, that Buddha's teachings “seem more to encourage a creation of a self  than a renunciation of a self, rather than present the self as a fiction, Gotama presented it as a project to be realised – the functional, moral self that breathes and acts in the world…This is a useful way of looking at the self for a lay Buddhist person who works in the world than a renunciation model.”

I feel the distinguished writer has not gone far enough. Speaking as Buddhist monk and layman of over eighty seconds standing, I feel the true message of Buddhism involves not the renunciation or creation of a self but its self-projection, along a virtual dimension, such that could you please pick up my dry-cleaning while simultaneously positing a critique of social relations with that fuckwit neighbor of mine whose car alarm keeps going off, not in a purely epistemological sense but within the parameters of a truly democratic dialogic concerned with your remembering to pick up my dry-cleaning- like it wasn't you spilled Thai lemon grass soup on my tux- you fucking retard.'

I personally honor Dr. Ambedkar most for converting to Buddhism because of the extraordinary success it achieved in exporting the concept and practice of untouchability to far off countries like Korea and Japan. The boxer, Cassius Clay who converted to Islam with the name Muhammad Ali- perhaps as a thank you to the Saudi and Omanis for finally getting round to abolishing slavery at around the same time- is my other great hero.

I look forward to Arundhati Roy's next book- hailing Max Hardcore as the greatest Feminist of all time and protesting his incarceration for obscenity.

This is the true message of Buddhism. Only real smart people got utter shit for brains.